Frozen Ashes

After witnessing one of the most beautiful and destructive climate events in my city’s modern history, I was left with one pervasive thought: Have our trees always been this weak?

I vaguely recall being able to “slide” all the way to school on more than one occasion as a child; this can’t be the first time our city has been blanketed in ice. It only appears out of the ordinary because our climate has shifted over the last decade and now we’ve become giant pussies when it comes to snow and ice. We used to laugh and play in this frozen wasteland. Now we just cower in the dark.

Have our trees similarly become “soft” or is something else at play? Now I write this with the admitted caveat that I’m NOT a botanist. I respect plants but, well, yeah… they’re plants. Snooze... Having said that, could there be a connection between the infestation of emerald ash borer beetles (Agrilus planipennis) and the weakening of tree branches, leading to an inconvenience and not a minor disaster, well, according to our mayoral incumbent.

I vaguely recall being able to “slide” all the way to school on more than one occasion as a child; this can’t be the first time our city has been blanketed in ice. It only appears out of the ordinary because our climate has shifted over the last decade and now we’ve become giant pussies when it comes to snow and ice. We used to laugh and play in this frozen wasteland. Now we just cower in the dark.

Have our trees similarly become “soft” or is something else at play? Now I write this with the admitted caveat that I’m NOT a botanist. I respect plants but, well, yeah… they’re plants. Snooze... Having said that, could there be a connection between the infestation of emerald ash borer beetles (Agrilus planipennis) and the weakening of tree branches, leading to an inconvenience and not a minor disaster, well, according to our mayoral incumbent.

I vaguely recall being able to “slide” all the way to school on more than one occasion as a child; this can’t be the first time our city has been blanketed in ice. It only appears out of the ordinary because our climate has shifted over the last decade and now we’ve become giant pussies when it comes to snow and ice. We used to laugh and play in this frozen wasteland. Now we just cower in the dark.

Have our trees similarly become “soft” or is something else at play? Now I write this with the admitted caveat that I’m NOT a botanist. I respect plants but, well, yeah… they’re plants. Snooze... Having said that, could there be a connection between the infestation of emerald ash borer beetles (Agrilus planipennis) and the weakening of tree branches, leading to an inconvenience and not a minor disaster, well, according to our mayoral incumbent.

via wikipedia

To those who point out that other kinds of trees were affected in the ice storm, the emerald ash borer is known to attack other clades (or evolutionary lineages) of trees in its native homeland. Most parasites are NOT host specialists but resource specialists (i.e. if it has bark and phloem then it can be exploited). Although a paper by Anulewicz et al. (2008) showed no evidence of the beetle attacking non-ash species in North America, could things have changed in the last five years after increasing their foothold?

While this is just the worthless speculation of an evolutionary biologist, I think it warrants further study. If the blackout had been citywide, we could very well have resorted to rioting, looting, and cannibalism, which are viable options for those still without power…